Mobile devices and social media

technique of transmitting data, voice and various sorts

of services. Section 3.1.4.1 “Mobile apps for agriculture”

presents an analysis of the stocktaking exercise, identifying and characterizing how this technology has been developed in the agriculture area.

Today, there are tens of thousands of applications available in the area of agriculture. Most of the applications are oriented to specific aspects, but some others are based on platforms (ecosystem), where there are many interconnected applications (Qiang et al., 2012).

These applications provide information (SMS or more advanced), deliver transactional services and provide advisory services for decision-making help. However, mobile devices and applications are more popular in those areas with little connectivity and used more by small farmers. According to Qiang et al. (2012), the benefits of these apps in the development of the agricultural sector can be achieved through the following ways:

z Provision of better access to information: providing producers immediate access to market information can allow them to attain higher product prices. Also, by accessing accurate information regarding weather and pest and diseases, better risk management is achieved.

z Provision of better access to agricultural extension services: accurate advice can be given for good farming practices and support. This could result in crop yield improvements and more accurate assessments of the condition of pastures.

z Provision of better connections with the market and distribution networks: with the improvement of links among producers, suppliers and buyers, value chains become more transparent and efficient, less manipulated by intermediaries. In addition, better accounting and traceability helps to increase efficiency and forecasting and to reduce administrative burden and fraud.

z Provision of better access to funding opportunities:

with access to funding and insurance opportunities and alternative payment methods, farmers can achieve an increase in crop yields production diversification and reduction of economic loss.

In an important review of mobile apps in terms of results of Web of Science search for citations dated Jan 2008–

Nov 2017 and Web site or developer links for apps noted in text, over 6100 citations were returned for “smartphone application” (Eichler Inwood and Dale, 2019). This is a test of the amount of activity and variety of applications in this field. The apps can be found independently, where most of the projects correspond to projects and tests and can generate valuable solutions in the market.

Likewise, these apps can be found on platforms, where they are integrated with other types of services, and where, in general, they correspond to commercial and/or governmental solutions.

A growing body of evidence suggests that in many circumstances, information and digital technologies, specifically mobile phones, can help address economic, social and environmental problems in rural areas.

Although connecting farmers and buyers is a great start, continuous support is needed to solve the logistical delivery of produce, particularly from farmers in remote rural areas.

In terms of economic impact, there is evidence that use of mobile applications with price information can help to reduce price market distortions, and increase production and income. In the cocoa and coffee market, a unit increase in mobile phone usage will reduce price distortion by 0.22 percentage points on average (Nsabimana and Amuakwa-Mensah, 2018). The total effect of mobile phone usage on price distortion is highest in Mexico with a rate of about − 0.54 percentage points, followed by Brazil with a rate of about − 0.32 percentage points. Ethiopia and Madagascar were found to have the least effect of about − 0.14 percentage points and

− 0.15 percentage points, respectively.

In this same area, studies have identified the impact of price dissemination (Torero, 2013) through radio.

For example, access to market information resulted in higher farm-gate prices (around 15 percent) for maize in Uganda (Muto and Yamano, 2009). Similarly, large effects have been suggested in Peru and the Philippines (Futch and McIntosh, 2009), but there are also cases in which no or much smaller effects were found (Muto and Yamano, 2009). In the case of M-Farm in Kenya, Baumüller (2015) found that price information can help farmers plan production processes better when deciding what to grow and when to harvest. Many farmers changed their cropping patterns, although they mainly expanded existing rather than grew new crops. There were reports that M-Farm had helped the farmers obtain higher prices and raise their income, but the evidence from the study is inconclusive. In India, there is evidence that use of mobile phones encouraged poor farmers towards greater market participation and diversification to high-value crops (Mittal and Mehar, 2012). This change has helped increase farm earnings through higher price realization, reduction in wastage and increase in income. Another example is mKrishi,⁹⁸ which increased farmer profitability by 45 percent in India, by providing access to information to help farmers improve yield and connect with supply chains.

The resilience of agricultural livelihoods is key to making sustainable development a reality by ensuring that agriculture and food systems are productive and risk sensitive to feed present and future generations.

In general, under this area we have climate-smart agriculture, an approach to agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, enhances adaptation and mitigates emissions where possible. In this area, there are some specific cases of mobile applications, where we can highlight the following.

a) Helping farmers in terms of crop growth and occurrences of pest attacks or crop failure, climate-smart adaptation. In most of these cases a mix between mobile devices and AI algorithms have been developed. Although there is no revision of the mobile applications (market and projects), we present a couple of cases. FAO has implemented the Fall Armyworm Monitoring and Early Warning System (FAMEWS) to monitor, analyse and produce early warnings, including risk to food security, including recommendations on pesticide management, monitoring and early warning, and a practical guide for farmers and government extension workers on how to best manage the pest.⁹⁹ Also, Plantix,¹⁰⁰ developed by German start-up Progressive Environmental and Agricultural Technologies (PEAT), uses deep learning to detect more than 300 diseases, from images of crops uploaded by farmers. Besides diagnosis, the automatic image recognition app geo-tags uploaded images to monitor crop health across regions. MyIPM apps¹⁰¹ provide information on dozens of insects and diseases that infect peaches, blueberries, strawberries, apples, pears, cherries, cranberries and blueberries.

b) Precise and timely weather-based agroadvisory messages help in making informed decisions about input use (Mittal, 2016), thus leading to savings on irrigation and reducing the cost of other inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers. Women farmers also said that agroadvisory messaging helped them make more efficient use of inputs by increasing their knowledge about climate-smart technologies. The weather and crop calendar app (FAO and WMO) combines information on weather forecasts and crop schedules, providing early warning of potential risks. The cure and feed your livestock app helps reduce losses by providing information on animal disease control and animal feeding strategies.

Although it is possible to identify a large number of mobile applications (apps), there is little evidence regarding their use and the impacts that this may imply in relation to agriculture, risks and results. This

opens up the possibility of greater standardization, especially as a repository and promotion of this type of solution.

Youth around the world are increasingly turning away from agriculture. Traditionally requiring tough manual labour and offering low wages, agriculture does not often appeal to new generations who generally prefer to try their luck finding jobs in cities.¹⁰² Mobile technology and applications bring opportunities for youth and gender in rural areas.

In a recent study, Sekabira and Qaim (2017) concluded that mobile phone technologies can improve household living standards, gender equality and nutrition in rural areas, especially when women have access to mobile phones. Women seem to benefit over-proportionally from mobile phone technologies, which is plausible given that women are often particularly constrained in their access to markets and information. Hence, a new technology that helps reduce transaction costs and allows new forms of communication can be particularly advantageous for women. Higher incomes and better access to information for women positively influences their bargaining position within the household, thus also improving gender equality and nutrition.

The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) launched 14 mobile applications¹⁰³ to help farmers transfer technologies that enhanced agricultural productivity and trade in 2018.¹⁰⁴ The mobile apps target crops such as avocado, banana, cassava, maize, guava, cowpea and potato. The platform will “help farmers acquire genuine information unlike the conventional models that are open to farmers receiving wrong information that lead to growing of fake and unrecommended seeds”,¹⁰⁵ and this platform also will help “to improve research data democratization and insights to inform policies particularly on improving smallholder farmers’ livelihoods”.

An estimated one-third of all food produced globally is either lost or wasted. In an age where almost one billion people go hungry, this is unacceptable. Food loss and waste (FLW) represent misuse of the labour, water, energy, land and other natural resources that went into its production.¹⁰⁶ In an EU research project, the REFRESH study (Vogels et al., 2018) indicated that most apps cover the areas of planning and storing of food, in particular on announcing product expiration; followed by apps in the areas of provisioning, preparation and disposal of food; fewer apps are available in the area of consumption of food. Apps and Web sites with shopping list functionality only indirectly reduce food waste but seem to be the most popular applications. However, the

CASE 1 FAO MOBILE APPS AS DIGITAL ADVISORY SERVICES IN RWANDA AND SENEGAL

FAO DIGITAL PORTFOLIO Agricultural Services Apps

A set of new apps is providing farmers with real-time services through information on weather, livestock care, markets and nutrition.

The weather and crop calendar app combines information on weather forecasts and crop schedules, providing early warning of potential risks. The cure and feed your livestock app helps reduce losses by providing information on animal disease control and animal feeding strategies. AgriMarketplace enables farmers to obtain better information about suppliers for raw material purchases, marketplaces to sell their products and market prices. e-Nutrifood gives rural people recommendations on producing, conserving and eating nutritious foods.

The Fall Armyworm Monitoring and Early Warning System (FAMEWS) app aims to tackle a devastating pest destroying maize and other important crops across parts of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Only farmers in their fields can successfully manage Fall Armyworm. That is why FAO has developed a tool to capture data uploaded by farmers in their fields. The information added to the app is transferred to a global Web-based platform and analysed to give real-time situation reports, calculate infestation levels and suggest measures to reduce impact.

Water Productivity through Open access of Remotely sensed derived data (WaPOR) monitors and reports on agriculture water productivity over Africa and the Near East. It provides open access to the water productivity database and its thousands of underlying map layers. It allows for direct data queries, time series analyses, area statistics and data download of key variables associated to water and land productivity assessments. The portal and app services are directly accessible through dedicated FAO WaPOR APIs, which will eventually also be available through the FAO API store. Water productivity assessments and other computation-intensive calculations are powered by Google Earth Engine.

EMA-i is an early warning app developed by FAO to facilitate quality and real time livestock disease reporting captured by animal health workers in the field. EMA-i is integrated in the FAO’s Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i) where data are safely stored and used by countries. EMA-i is easily adaptable to countries’ existing livestock disease reporting systems. By supporting surveillance and real time reporting capacities at country level and improving communication between stakeholders, EMA-i contributes to enhance early warning and response to animal disease occurrence with high impact on food security and livelihood. EMA-i is currently used in six countries in Africa (Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Lesotho, United Republic of Tanzania and Zimbabwe).

Collect Earth is a tool that enables data collection through Google Earth. In conjunction with Google Earth, Bing Maps and Google Earth Engine, users can analyse high and very high resolution satellite imagery for a wide variety of purposes, including: (a) support of multiphase National Forest Inventories; (b) Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) assessments; (c) monitoring agricultural land and urban areas;

(d) validation of existing maps; (e) collection of spatially explicit socio-economic data; and (f) quantifying deforestation, reforestation and desertification. Its user-friendliness and smooth learning curve make it a perfect tool for performing fast, accurate and cost-effective assessments. It is highly customizable for specific data collection needs and methodologies.

Source: www.fao.org

CASE 2 MOBILE FINANCIAL SERVICES AVAILABLE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

M-PESA Mobile money

M-Pesa was launched in 2007, and is still going strong. The concept of a phone-based money transfer service originated back in 2002, when researchers realized the popularity of the market for phone airtime individuals in a handful of African nations often transferred it to friends and family for subsequent use or resale. Paving the way for the as-yet non-existent M-Pesa, the researchers presented the research to a telecom provider, who became the first to authorize the transfer of airtime.

Vodafone, via its local operator Safaricom, became the project partner and rolled out the service. In 2013, around 16 million people had M-Pesa accounts. Since then it has expanded to Afghanistan, South Africa, India, Romania and Albania; the system processes more payments than Western Union does across its entire global network.

The system is simple in concept; users pay money in to one of 40,000 M-Pesa agents (who usually operate in small corner shops), who sell airtime on the Safaricom network. Withdrawals can be made by visiting another agent and the system can also be used to send money to other people via a simple menu on the phone.

Mobile money of this kind has also been used with increasing effect by aid agencies looking for an alternative to food distribution in humanitarian crisis situations. By setting up a mobile phone network running M-Pesa, it becomes possible to distribute and control flows of cash such that affected people can make purchases themselves rather than depending on aid convoys.

Several aspects of the M-Pesa case are worth drawing out as a study of innovation. First, it is a good

demonstration of the social aspects of diffusion of innovation. Kenya, like many African societies, is heavily dependent on personal relationships and word-of-mouth represents a key way for ideas to spread. In the case of M-Pesa this helped build up the network effect; essentially, without a critical mass of people connected to the system it does not offer much advantage. The more connections there are, the more attractive the system becomes. In the case of M-Pesa, this ‘tipping point’ was reached quite early and the widespread connectivity then enabled other services to be added which reinforced the value and drew more subscribers into the network. This network effect extended beyond the phone use itself to the network of retail stores able to offer the service so that people could deposit and receive money.

Source: www.mpesa.in/portal/

Figure 4-1 Key precision agriculture technologies

Source: Dryancour, 2017.

limited amount of scientific research that is currently present gives some indications that apps can help in raising consumer awareness regarding food waste, but the effects on food waste behaviour are unknown.

The effectiveness of these tools for advancing sustainability goals is unknown. Apps that connect farmers, extension agents and other agricultural actors to information relevant to the ways in which farm management decisions affect landscape sustainability are still needed. Such apps should be capable of filtering cloud-based information using GPS inputs cross-referenced to GIS resources, generic Internet-of-things sensors, volunteered geographic information, crowd-sourced data, and social networking for broad knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning (Eichler Inwood and Dale, 2019).

Mobile applications have many challenges such as lack of mobile-friendly and locally relevant digital content (Torero, 2013), rural mobile infrastructure limitations (connectivity, network and signal, electricity problems), and affordability related with the benefits, e-literacy, large number of local languages. Because most of the apps are related to projects and research, they do not scale properly, making their adoption and location difficult in a sustainable way. This problem should be solved when the most attractive apps in the market are integrated into platforms, forming part of a broad service to farmers.

4.1.2 PRECISION AGRICULTURE AND IOT